The Big Picture

I spent some time this past weekend rifleing through magazines. An article in The Economist (I'm pretty sure) is sticking with me.

It had a chart of US Government spending as a percentage of the US GDP going back around 200 years - by far the longest period I've seen such a chart cover. It was somewhat shocking to note that with a few brief exceptions, government spending didn't exceed 10% of GDP until the 20th century, but after the WWII peak to nearly 50%, never dropped back there. Current spending is some 1/3 of GDP.

What I've spent a few hours here and there looking for since is a chart of different countries spending as a percentage of GDP plotted together. If anyone can point me the right way I would really appreciate it.

I've been thinking a lot of just how 1/3 of our GDP can be government spending. How is this sustainable? OK, OK, we've seen quite clearly that it isn't. I see how in the wartime economy of WWII we could spend nearly 50%... but what are we doing today that is anything like the equivalent? In three years the US went from a second-rate power militarily to the overall leader worldwide, doing the bulk of the industrial work in crushing two other world powers in the process. What have we done in the last TEN years that even approaches that? The line continues to trend upwards, BTW.

I've grown increasingly leary of government spending over the course of my life. I'm starting to wonder if we're even able to reverse the trend without destroying the system.

All I hear lately is talk of nationalizing (using different terms most of the time) banks, industry, you name it. I feel like nothing is pushing the US forward except the tremendous inertia built up by the pushing of the prior century, and we've forgotten how to push at all, except backwards.